Nexo Knights 70331 Ultimate Macy and 70332 Ultimate Aaron [Review]

LEGO’s new Nexo Knights line has launched and is finally available. We’ve already reviewed two of the medium-sized sets from this line, but some of the little sets intrigued me. Each of the named characters has an Ultimate version, available as an individually boxed set for $10 USD. Part counts range between 65 and 101. Six characters are available now, and at least three more are in the pipeline.

The boxes are quite large for $10 sets, being made to sit on the shelf or hang on retail pegs. They’re comparable in size to a lot of the older bagged Bionicle and Hero Factory sets. Each contains two bags, an instruction booklet, and no stickers. Let’s begin with Aaron.

70332 Ultimate Aaron has 82 pieces. Aaron is the knight that also comes in Infernox Captures the Queen, but this is the ultimate version, so it must be better. Regular Aaron is wearing silver and lime green printed armor, with a pearl silver and trans-neon orange armor piece. Ultimate Aaron is much more environmentally conscious. Interestingly, despite looking significantly different, the two versions share the same print. The colors have been vastly changed, but the print (and consequently, the armor it’s indicating) has all the same outlines and details, which I think is pretty cool. Both share the same two-sided head. The shoulder armor, too, is identical except in one key area: Ultimate Aaron’s armor has four studs on the back, instead of two. It surprised me that LEGO would produce two armor molds so nearly identical. All things considered, though, I think I prefer regular Aaron’s silver suit over Ultimate Aaron’s green goblin getup.

I suspect, however, that the true reason these are ultimate figs lies in their accessories and alternate equipment loadouts. Ultimate Aaron comes ready for battle three times over. First, there’s the main battle mode. Aaron has two over-the-shoulder stud shooters mounted to his back armor. Cleverly, there’s a 1×1 clip facing down from the bottom of his backpack which serves as a third leg to stabilize him, since naturally with all that gear he’s back heavy. In this mode, he also carries a shield and a ridiculously fancy crossbow. Using a similar mechanism to the stud shooters, it fires a bar with a Ø5.9 tow-ball on the end, which is a marvelous new piece. Incidentally, this piece is compatible with all of LEGO’s other Ø5.9 ball family of pieces, such as the Mixels joints. Mecha builders, rejoice.

In the second mode, Aaron tries out for the Avengers’ role of most-underpowered superhero by bringing along Hawkeye’s bow and a shield with crosshairs on it. The colored inserts for the shields is a bit weird to me, but I suspect that’s because I haven’t watched the TV show or video game, and because I’m not in the target market. Nevertheless, they’re providing builders with a lot of fun pieces, and the shield tiles can be placed together for a cool pattern. This will be great for mosaics and detailing. Where were we? Oh yes, the final aspect of this second mode is a helmet with night-vision goggles.

The third mode is bananas. No, I mean that literally. You attach bananas to the shoulder guns, and swap out the trans-neon green 1×1 rounds for white ones, which I’m guessing represent banana goo. He also gets a shield emblazoned with a banana. Two extra bananas are included attached to the main stand, just in case you really need to trip up your foes.

Now, on to 70331 Ultimate Macy. She has 101 pieces, but most of the increase is the addition of myriad 1×1 studs for the shooters. I don’t have any other versions of Macy to compare, but I really like this version. She has a printed suit of red power armor, and trans-red shoulder armor with four studs, just like Aaron’s. Her trans-red faceshield is a new mold, and it’s awesome. I love the way it looks with the giant plume. Castle fans: don’t despair, there are amazing new Castle pieces in this line. They’re just mostly in spacey colors. Fingers crossed that LEGO will eventually produce all of these new pieces in more subdued colors (I do spy this piece in silver in Beast Master’s Chaos Chariot). One note, though: the face shield cannot hold traditional plumes. The prototyping was fascinating and rigorous, but sadly there’s no smaller hole inside to accept the tiny plume connector, which is an unfathomable oversight. [Edit: TBB reader Brad points out that a plume can be connected using a 1×1 round tile with bar. Here’s a photo to demonstrate. In my opinion it’s an ungainly workaround for what should have been a better design.]

Macy too has three battle modes. In main mode, she has a ludicrously oversized gattling-style stud shooter, and she has a giant stand to keep her from fall over. In my opinion, stapping a minifig to this six-stud shooter and saying she wields it is a bit like strapping a person to a howitzer and calling it a personal armament. She also gets a giant mace, courtesy of five of the new 1×1 pyramid slopes.

Mode 2 sees her ditch the mace and swap out her shield for a trans-neon green one with a seasnake’s head emblazoned on it. The silver part of the shield also sprouts vines. She still has her giant gattling, but swaps the trans-red studs for trans-green ones.

In her third mode, she is unencumbered by the giant gun, and instead gets a totally rad Flaming Battle Axe +3. It’s probably also Vorpal. Her shield swaps to none other than a flaming ax—uh, sword. Wait, why is it a flaming sword, when she’s carrying a flaming axe? I don’t know.

And then, of course, there’s the base that ties each of them all together. In both sets, they hold all the weapons and armor, and provide a stand for kids to show off their Ultimate figures. They’re not the greatest construction sets, but for $10, they provide a lot of cool weapons and armor, and a chance for kids to get elite versions of figures without waiting for special occasions to be gifted the really expensive sets. Ultimately (heh-heh), I like these sets, and at $10 a pop, I just might buy the others.

Nice review! My brother and I have bought Ultimate Macy, Clay, and Aaron because we figured those are the three figs that are least likely to appear again in other sets. I always love the idea of energized/powered up versions of characters (see the LEGO Ninjago NRG and Airjitzu figures for examples that are more magical than technological in their design), and these ones are excellent. The colorized, futuristic costumes and interchangeable powers give me a real MegaMan Battle Network vibe. Style Change and Battle Chips, anyone? I was a big fan of the MegaMan Battle Network games so I can totally appreciate finally getting a LEGO line of cyber-warriors that echoes that.

Before we get any of the other Ultimate figures we’ll be waiting to see what other sets those characters appear in. I know Beast Master and his Globlins already come in the Chaos Chariot, which is a set I definitely don’t want to miss out on, and I believe Lavaria will be coming in a summer set. Not sure about Robin. He appears in the mini Fortrex polybag, but his awesome silver armor doesn’t.

Overall, these sets are kind of curious. They’re packaged and priced kind of like previous “gimmick” sets like Ninjago spinners/fliers and Chima Speedorz, but there isn’t really anywhere near as much of a kinetic element to their style of play. Instead, the gimmick is the Merlok 2.0 app and the interchangeable gear. Still, they offer a reasonable value for money and some really awesome figure designs. :) Can’t wait for Ultimate Lance and Ultimate Axl to be released this summer!

Aanchir: Glad you enjoyed the review! And thanks for providing your thoughts as well. I suspect that as long as this line is anything short of a total flop, we’ll get multiple versions of all the characters (and it appears to be doing quite well, based on my experience in the LEGO store the other day).

Regarding traditional plumes not fitting in Macy’s visor, I saw that 70327 The King’s Mech uses one of the new one by one plates with pin (6126113) with a feather stuck in the underside (at least, I’m pretty sure that’s how it works – I don’t have the set in hand). If that one by one plate fits into Macy’s visor the same way, you could attach a plume that way. Not sure how it would look, but it might work!

An addendum to my last post: I realized today that the Ultimate Lavaria and Ultimate Beast Master minifigures are actually exclusive to those sets. The regular Beast Master figure has different leg printing and the regular Lavaria minifigure (not yet released, but appearing in one of the summer sets and visible on the characters page of the Nexo Knights website) has different torso printing. So Ultimate Robin is the only one without any exclusive printing.

Not to be “that guy”, but i should probably point out that Macy’s “plume” is actually her hair, tied back into a
ponytail, and threaded through the top of her helmet.(her screenshots on her character profile at lego.com will confirm this.) other than that one minor detail, this was a great review, and i look forward to more like this one!
(p.s.,will definitely be picking these up!)

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